Daily Devotion

“The German missionary Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930), born in Tübingen, was sent to Qingdao, Shandong, at the end of the nineteenth century. When Germany's forcible construction of the Jiaozhou–Jinan railway led to bloodshed, he led doctors to rescue the injured. He founded the Lixian school, organized a society for Confucian studies in 1913, and turned his tennis court into a library of some 30,000 old Chinese books. In his twenty-odd years in China he translated many Chinese classics into German; returning home in 1924, he taught Chinese studies at the University of Frankfurt and founded the China Institute there.”

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity (BDCC) · BDCC, "Wilhelm, Richard" (reproduced from A Dictionary of Asian Christianity, ed. Scott W. Sunquist, 2001), bdcconline.net

Scripture

Matthew 26:39 Then he went a little further and fell facedown to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Reflection

"Not my will, but yours be done." Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane reveals the deepest peace in life—not stemming from absolute control over destiny, but from complete surrender to the divine will. We often feel weary from clinging to our own plans and anxieties, trying to forcibly control an uncontrollable future. However, true rest for the soul begins the moment we let go of our ego. When we return sovereignty to the Most High God and submit to His perfect order that transcends time and space, the storms of life can no longer disturb the tranquility of our hearts, and the soul, in submission, gains the eternal power to transcend fear and death.